


Trying To Keep It Together (But I'm Falling Apart)

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:03:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1854037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has a private memorial for Cas after the Leviathans break free through him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trying To Keep It Together (But I'm Falling Apart)

**Author's Note:**

> I'd tag this with 'implied Dean/Cas,' but it's not like there isn't enough of that with the show in the first place. 
> 
> But really, you can't convince me ever that Dean holding on to that trenchcoat is not a sign of him loving Cas in some fashion deeper than just brotherly.

It was tradition. A hunter died, you burned the body. The body didn’t make it, you burn something in remembrance for them. 

Castiel may have been an angel, but he was part of the Winchester family, and that made him deserving of a hunter’s funeral. 

The problem for Dean, though, was he didn’t want to burn Cas’s trench coat. He’d pulled it out of the lake, held on to it. It had been what had convinced him that Cas was gone, that this time, he wasn’t going to be brought back by God. It was the last tangible reminder he had of Cas’s very existence. And he couldn’t bring himself to burn it.

So many people had died, either for him or because of him, and now the extended family tree had just lost another branch. Even with tradition, he hadn’t wanted Bobby to burn the last picture they’d taken with Ellen and Jo. He hadn’t said anything at the time, because they were all still numb at the time, having lost them both in what had ultimately been an exercise in futility, since the Colt hadn’t even worked on Lucifer. But he wished they’d kept that photo. Just something that could be held, allowed him to feel like he could still hold them close.

And now it came to Cas. Despite the angel thing, the deal with Crowley, or the ‘I am the God’ business, he had been through enough shit with Dean, Sam, and Bobby to earn the last rites of a hunter. More importantly, he was family. He deserved... Cas deserved so much more than to be made into some hollowed out shell for some... things that predated existence. He was a living being, not only one who had made mistakes, but one who had genuinely attempted to try to make amends for his actions. And then his hope for redemption was so casually tossed aside by the Leviathans, ripping him apart, destroying him.

That in mind, Dean just couldn’t find it in himself to burn the trench coat. To do that was... admitting that Cas was gone. And Dean wasn’t ready for that. 

He stood out in the clearing behind their safehouse, holding the trench coat and a lighter. And he couldn’t bring himself to light it up and say his goodbyes.

Maybe he just wasn’t ready, or willing, to say goodbye to Cas. 

He was trying. God knew he was trying. After all, Cas had made a deal with Crowley and gone power-mad, but hadn’t it been in part because he’d felt he couldn’t confide in the Winchesters, in the family that he had built up down on Earth during the apocalypse? Whose fault was that really? Could he blame his friend, his guardian angel, someone who had become just as important to him as his brother, his father, his surrogate father, the people who had been such vital parts of his life, for doing what he thought he’d needed to because he’d become that close to the Winchesters? Or was he to blame for not being there when Cas really needed him, too busy with first Lisa and Ben and then Sam’s problems?

Dean didn’t know for sure, but he was afraid that it was the latter. 

Looking to the trench coat in his hands, feeling the fabric, then looking over to the lighter and the can of gasoline over on a nearby tree stump, Dean wondered if he could really bring himself to burn it. Burning it would mean that he truly believed that Cas was gone.

And something in Dean couldn’t accept that. After everything that he’d been through, Cas deserved better. He deserved to have been able to die as himself, as the man who had risked his life for Dean and Sam and Bobby and all of humanity. He hadn’t deserved the Leviathans... what, eating their way out of his body, tearing him apart, turning him to so much meat...

Dean’s eyes suddenly clamped shut, his mind refusing to think more about what had happened out there, refusing to let him. 

It had another effect on him. He realized that he couldn’t burn the coat. Cas may have earned a hunter’s funeral, but Dean couldn’t let go, not of this last connection. He’d lost so much so far, he couldn’t let go of this last piece of the man who had been like a brother to him.

Grabbing the lighter and the gas can, he went to the Impala and popped the trunk. Gently, carefully, he placed Cas’s coat in a far corner of the trunk and closed the lid.

Maybe it was stupid, some pointless sentimentality, the kind that would get hunters dead, but Dean didn’t care. 

Sometimes, someone was important enough to merit pointless sentimentality.


End file.
